On this day in:

1912 The British luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg shortly before midnight. It sank at 2:20 a.m. on April 15. (Authentic Titanic Recipes)

1927Clarence Birdseye of Massachusetts received a U.K. patent for frozen fish fingers.

1935 Black Sunday. A huge dust storm or 'black blizzard' blew through areas of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. One of the worst dust storms in U.S. history, it displaced an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil.

1939 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck was published.

1945 A malfunctioning toilet on German U-Boat U-1206 forces it to surface off the coast of Scotland. Promptly attacked by British aircraft, the Captain scuttles the boat. (Toilet Trivia)

1964 Rachel Louise Carson died. An American biologist and author of 'Silent Spring,' about environmental pollution, especially the dangers of DDT.